Medical Bloopers
That Will Really Turn You Inside Out In Tuscany, New Jersey in 1999, Michael Franzoczychski went in for what he thought was a routine double appendectomy. What he didn't know what that he'd wake up not only still holding onto his two unloved appendices, but he'd gain two healthy ovaries, a womb, a birth canal, and also have his penis removed, bisected, inverted, and inserted (if you know what I mean). The surgeon is reported to have shrugged and said, “Oops. My bad.” Talk about your all-time medical BLOOPERS! Loveless Indiana? More Like Luckless! In Loveless, Indiana, around 2003, a woman named Diana Fowler underwent elective cosmetic cancer tumor reduction surgery, only to recover slower than expected and to feel “delirium inducing pain” every time she moved. Turned out – BLOOPER – the old Sawbones had left an industrial grade set of roofer's tin snips and two dozen Scrabble tiles in the woman's chest cavity. Who would've thunk it? The Bee's Knees or the MD's "Oh, Jeez"? In Boston, Mass, a city North of New York if you think about it, a Harvard Divinity School student, Virgil Jefferries, 24, originally of Richmond, New Hampshire, thought his throat was closing because he had been inadvertently been stung by a bee in June of 2006, and he was trying to teletype as much to his elderly dinner date with a series of blinks in Morse code as his face turned blue and a Godless darkness crept in around the corners of his eyes. It was ten minutes before the aging MD across the Gastropub patio table got the picture and plunged his A-1 slathered steak knife into the asphyxiant’s trachea for the classic Ballroom Tracheotomy technique (piloted by none other than Dr. James “Hug 'em” Heimlich of the Heimlich Maneuver) only to find that it wasn't a bee sting that had caused the swelling, it was a WASP that he'd drank right out of his can of Old Hill Farmstead Brewery's Twilight of the Idols American Honey Double Porter that had stung him directly in the throat. Even further – Virgil hadn't been Morse-ing “I've been stung by a bee!” he was Morse-ing “I have an Epinephrine Injection Pen in the glove box of my Volvo Sportster Coup, please get it for me, will you!” What an absolute Bonanza of Bloopers! Too Bad She Wasn't Listening to Her Cover of the Beatles' "Help" Instead! On January 9th, 2009, Surgeon and Internist Dr. Tiffany Strongbloed of Mayor's Purchase, Tennessee, was listening to the certified multiplatinum, Grammy-winning, and pop-soul genre defining album Private Dancer by iconoclastic phenom Tina Turner while performing a routine rib-spreading and exploratory “poke-around” inside patient Dan Dirigible (of the Kensington, Connecticut Dirigibles) when her favorite song of all time, the chart topping single that won Ms. Turner her eleventh(!) Grammy, “What's Love Got To Do With It,” came on. Transported back to 1984 immediately, Dr. Stronbloed began singing along at the top of her lungs and even acting out the lyrics to the song. Unfortunately for Mr. Dirigible, the lyrics to the heartfelt masterpiece read, “Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?” Needless to say, Dr. T had a scalpel in her left hand (she was one of the rare Southpaw surgeons not common in the American South since the Reconstruction Period of Carpetbaggin' Medicine Men, as the locals called migrant medical professionals in the era) and soon was singing into a microphone in her right, whose head consisted of the four main atriums of Mr. Dirigible's heart and the handle of which was an eight inch section of his carotid artery. Responsibility for this gruesome incident was chalked up to Terry Britton, producer of the unprecedented track, who unfortunately had passed by 2009, so Mr. Dirigible was forced to settle with his estate, an legal action he undertook not out of malice, but only to make the down payment on a then-experimental Jarvik Artificial Heart Model Especial (he had to go to Guadelahara for the Jarvik, because of well, you know what happened with Dr. Jarvik and those early, exploding Jarviks, talk about a BLOOPER!).